What, exactly, does Barack Obama’s mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Sen. Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?

A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama’s proposed talks with Iran to fail ­ and they’re already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the pre-positioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to warlike measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country’s oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.

It’s tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect’s plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.

“Kinetic Action” Against Iran

When it comes to Iran, however, it’s far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama ­ including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton ­ have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.

Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP “2008 Presidential Task Force” study which resulted in a report titled “Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge.” The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP’s executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.

Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran’s nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for “preventive military action”). It drew attention to Israeli fears that “the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of ‘living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'” and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel’s inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.

WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran’s “nuclear challenge” will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP’s agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel’s aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.

Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP’s David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons’ channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward’s latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a “surge” in Iraq.

The report of the Coats-Robb task force ­ “Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development” ­ went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, “It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a predetermined time period so that Tehran does not try to ‘run out the clock.'”

Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged “pre-positioning military assets,” coupled with a “show of force” in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran’s economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, “kinetic action.”

That “kinetic action” ­ a U.S. assault on Iran ­ should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran’s nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran’s military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran’s naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran’s ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and “manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc.”

Palling Around With the Neocons

At a Nov. 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization’s deputy director for research, laid out the institute’s view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace ­ before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.

“What we’ve got to do is to show the world that we’re making a big deal of engaging the Iranians,” he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. “I’d throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it.” He advocates this approach only because he believes it won’t work. “The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran,” he adds. “The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion.”

The Coats-Robb report, “Meeting the Challenge,” was written by one of the hardest of Washington’s neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: “Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?” Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding “no,” although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:

“If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone.”

The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama’s éminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC’s provocative report.

Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Sen. John McCain’s campaign team. Among UANI’s leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.

UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to “inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran’s role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad” and to “heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world.”

Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He’s insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action “off the table.”

Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don’t sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree ­ and, if so, why they’re still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.

Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Va., is a contributing editor at the Nation magazine, whose Web site hosts his “The Dreyfuss Report,” and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has demanded that the Obama administration “face up to Iran”, amid Israeli preparations for war. In a Saturday phone conversation, Barak said the time is ticking for newly-appointed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to dissuade Tehran from enriching uranium.

He called for the international community to work side by side in order to free the world of “challenges such as the Islamic Republic’s nuclear activities”.

“The free world has many challenges on the agenda, from Iran to radical Islamic terrorism, and tight international cooperation is needed to face these issues,” Barak was quoted as saying.

The Israeli demand comes shortly after a Thursday report published by The Jerusalem Post, which confirmed hat Tel Aviv is planning a solo attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israeli threats against the Islamic Republic reached a new height in November, fueling speculations that Tel Aviv intends to stage its third attack on Middle Eastern countries over nuclear allegations.

Israeli intelligence sources told the Times late in November that the prospect of military action against Iran had significantly increased.

Israeli Air Force Commander General Ido Nehushtan also announced that his forces were ready to follow any order to bring Iran’s nuclear program to a halt.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in a recently released report said, however, that the agency “has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran,” adding that there has been ‘no indication’ of Iran conducting nuclear reprocessing activities.

The report also urges Iran to increase its cooperation with the agency over the “alleged studies” of weaponization attributed to Tehran by Western countries.

Tehran has been accused of launching a “green salt project, high explosives testing, and the missile re-entry vehicle project”.

Iranian officials say the allegations are based on “fabricated data” and have requested the UN nuclear watchdog to provide Tehran with the original documents.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, however, says it is in no “position” to do so due to US reluctance to provide the agency with the original copies of the documents.

Israel is drawing up plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure that does not require America’s support, it has been claimed.

By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 7:07PM GMT 04 Dec 2008

Defence sources told the Jerusalem Post they were considering going it alone in a strike on Iran.

Conventional military thinking states that Israel would need America’s backing if only to allow Israeli warplanes to reach Iran by overflying Iraq, where the airspace is controlled by the United States Air Force.

But the paper said Israeli planners had come up with ideas that did not require support from the United States.

This comes after Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, failed to persuade President George W Bush to support an Israeli air attack in the last few months of his presidency.

It is always better to co-ordinate,” a source, described by the Jerusalme Post as a top Defense Ministry official, said.

“But we are also preparing options that do not include co-ordination.”

Israeli officials have said it would be difficult, but not impossible, to launch a strike against Iran without clear support from America.

One option would be to use Israeli submarines firing cruise missiles from off the Iranian coast in the Gulf.

Another might be to use Israel’s close links with Turkey to persuade Ankara to allow Israeli attack aircraft, air refuelling jets and pilot rescue helicopters to use Turkish airstrips.

“There are a wide range of risks one takes when embarking on such an operation,” the Jerusalem Post said.

In September, an article in ‘Defense News’ said America had recently agreed to supply an improved early warning radar system to Israel precisely because this sent a signal to Iran about Washington’s close military links with Israel.

“First, we want to put Iran on notice that we’re bolstering our capabilities throughout the region, and especially in Israel,” the article said.

We’re doing all we can to stand by your side and strengthen defences, because at this time, we don’t want you rushing into the military option.'” In a related article at about the same time, TIME magazine raised the possibility that through the deployment of the radar, America wants to keep an eye on Israeli airspace, so that the US is not surprised if and when the IAF is sent to bomb Iran, a scenario Washington wants to avoid.

Last week, Iran’s nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh revealed that the country was operating more than 5,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and would continue to install centrifuges and enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel for the country’s future nuclear power plants.

“At this point, more than 5,000 centrifuges are operating in Natanz,” said Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

This represents a significant increase from the 4,000 Iran had said were up and running in August at the plant.

The Islamic republic has said it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that will ultimately involve 54,000 centrifuges.